Nigeria has been reorganizing its health system since the Bamako Initiative of 1987 formally promoted community-based methods of increasing accessibility of drugs and health care services to the population, in part by implementing user fees. The new strategy dramatically increased accessibility through community-based healthcare reform, resulting in more efficient and equitable provision of services. A comprehensive approach strategy was extended to all areas of health care, with subsequent improvement in the health care indicators and improvement in health care efficiency and cost.

The Nigerian health care system is continuously faced with a shortage of doctors known as 'brain drain' due to the fact that many highly skilled Nigerian doctors emigrate to North America and Europe.

In 1995, It was estimated that 21,000 Nigerian doctors were practicing in the United States alone, which about the same as the number of doctors working in the Nigerian public service. Retaining these expensively-trained professionals has been identified as one of the goals of the government.